Happiness Day: “Let’s create a happier world together”

It seems there’s a day for just about everything nowadays, Wikipedia lists 29 commemorative days in March alone. There’s everything from the traditional, St. Patrick’s Day, to the modern, World Consumer Rights Day, to the outright odd, Pi Day which celebrates the mathematical constant Pi. Here’s Larry Shaw the organiser of the first Pi Day. No one could accuse him of being an eccentric!

Many of our commemorative days have been hijacked by consumerism the biggest example being Christmas Day. And many others have lost their significance, St Piran’s Day the patron saint of Tin Miners in Cornwall for example.

Others are modern creations and are little known but often these can be the most relevant to modern society. World Water Day on March 22nd focusing on the importance of fresh water is a good example. However, one that I think has a huge relevance was enshrined by the United Nations General Assembly on 28th June 2012. It marks the 20th March as the International Day of Happiness or simply Happiness Day.

The founder of the International Day of Happiness is Jayme Illien an orphan rescued from the streets of Calcutta by one of Mother Theresa’s charity organisations. The UN now recognises the pursuit of happiness as a human right and a fundamental human goal.

At Treysta we support this concept and have ingrained the objective of helping our clients achieve higher levels of happiness and well-being into our advice process. The post-modern western world has kidded its population into believing wealth and success will drive happiness when in fact all the evidence suggests it’s the other way around. There was a brilliant line in the Stan TV show Billions the other night, the character, a rich hedge fund manager said “I remember how happy I felt when I made my first million, nothing made me feel that happy again until I gave away 200 times that amount to charity”. It was a brilliantly scripted piece of fiction but based on well-founded psychology.

The truth is, happiness is a driver of success and happier people perform better at work which in turn can drive financial reward. Setting targets around your next pay rise or promotion as a driver of increased happiness is flawed and yet this is so often how we live our lives, until we realise the error and discover it’s too late to do anything about it.

The International Day of Happiness is supported by Action for Happiness and they have produced a great handbook to help people think about being happier. It contains ten keys to happier living and we think it provides great food for thought at the very least. Download the guide book here, happy reading!

Treysta is all about guiding and supporting its clients to live happier healthy lives based on their individual value sets. Of course financial security is part of that equation and ensuring this objective is met remains our highest priority.